I don't think any of the emulated FFVI ports fixed the glitches in the game either. GBA one, as far as I know, did. And those do screw with the balance since they effect how status effects and stats work.

Logged

o/` I do not feel joy o/`o/` I do not dream o/`o/` I only stare at the door and smoke o/`

I don't think I've given FFVI the credit it deserves. I've been replaying it on the GBA and having a blast. More fun than the first time I played it, for some reason.

I played the SNES version by renting it from the video store down the street... several times. The first time, I went with someone else's save that was already on the Floating Continent, so I played that and into the World of Ruin. I'd later start my own save, but, it was a tad less fun knowing what happens later on. Still my favourite FF though.

I wish I could have that nostalgia for it, but unfortunately Europes first go at FF6 wasn't until they released the Playstation port, and even then it flew under my radar until the GBA version came out.

I was an artsy high school student when I was frequently renting it, so while everyone else was writing final exams I was playing FFVI and having lemon meringue pie for lunch. ...Wow, I was a starving artist to a T back then. Or maybe just plain lazy.

I have weird nostalgia for that game, but nostalgia nonetheless.

The GBA version - I think it sounded a little 'off.' Like more tinny or something. It fixed things and lacked the terrible PSOne load times, yet I keep going back to the PS version.

Yeah, for all that the GBA port added to the original version, the really tinny GBA speakers and washed out pallet really did no favors to it.

And really, outside of the new translation the additions were mostly hit or miss. The biggest mechanical fix was making Evade actually work instead of just reading from M Evade (of course being separate stats to begin with was pretty damn unnecessary), with the second biggest(/other?) change being the removal of the Invis/Doom trick (but not actually fixing the Clear/Invisible glitch, leaving the near-literal minefield of Relm's Sketch intact, among other things), while the new spells really didn't add anything (by the time you got Flood it was most likely already outdated, Valor only affects the first hit of a given attack making it useless, and Gravija only shows up after trashing the bonus dungeon boss making it the game's new Sword of Infinity+1), though the new Espers did do a bit more but are still pretty useless (Leviathan is probably the most useful since the fight against it can be used to teach Mog Water Rondo in the WoR which is otherwise impossible to learn by then, Gilgamesh's gimmick isn't too bad for when you get him, Diabolos who again shows up way too fucking late to matter at all, and Cactuar who sports a useless gimmick and the Speed +2 stat boost which still doesn't matter since the ATB's calculation still has almost no use for the Speed stat).

The aforementioned Bonus Dungeon is a mess in design since it cobbles together dungeon assets used throughout the game almost haphazardly, making the dungeon ridiculously long and navigation a bitch, making the multiple parties gimmick really fucking annoying (by mandating a very specific order of actions that if done incorrectly could very well force you to have to warp all the way back to start), the bosses' gimmicks got very stupid at times (having to MP death the Earth Dragon mk2 in particular), the enemies were mostly blobs of HP and didn't do anything new or unique, and the prizes were just Superweapons+ mk2 (which didn't matter for most of your characters since you could farm Ragnaroks, Illuminas/Lightbringers, and Atma/Ultima Weapons from Kefka in this version (which in turn made the choice for the Ragnarok Esper or Sword a no-brainier) and they're still better than anything this dungeon gives you).

And then there's the other area which is more of a enemy rush rather than a proper dungeon, is stupidly long, and has gimmicky bullshit that can easily wipe you on the later floors (and more gimmicky bullshit like interspersing enemies that you can steal Gemboxes/Soul of Thasmas, Economizers/Celestriads, and Offerings/Master's Scrolls from but do shit like spam Ultimas or insta kills at you).

All this of course, and the rest of the game's code is still a literal clusterfuck of bad design choices, trivial challenge, and game breaking bugs.

IMO, FFVI is one of the best in the series. Nice long plot, (mostly) likeable characters, fun battles, good music. My dad bought it for me for my 15th b-day in '95. I think the shit was like $70 bucks, or some outrageous price (reminds me of Street Fighter II Turbo's price hike).I played FFVI 9 hours straight the first day, longest continuous video game session I've ever done. It was only cuz the cartridge or console finally had enough, and the game froze that I even stopped. It was during the 3D mine cart escape.

Saint's 3rd - Made great progress over the weekend. Have total control of 2 of the 4 areas. All of the activities are done, and most of the upgrades have been purchased. Now accumulating a ton of cash. Mostly main missions and challenges left (I'm not gonna worry about completing any particular ones). Hopefully I'll be done with this one by this coming weekend, so I can start GTAV.

I'm not really fond of FFVI myself. Square was obviously trying to represent every single character archetype and gameplay mechanic they could thing of, but it's like they did it without any regards to whether it made sense or not. So you end up with things like two separate bluemages (neither of whom are that useful), some characters that have useful-but-really-situational skills like Celes, Sabin and Edgar each having one really overpowered god-tech (so you always need them in your party but spamming their thing gets tedious), there's a lot of useless skills/spells beyond that, and then the second half turns into some number-crunching hell where everything is second to how you're using espers to boost characters' stats or something.

XBC - Haven't played this in a few days, but I just remembered that, because most of the monsters drop meat, and because Riki can steal, you get a lot of situations where he steals... a chunk of meat/an epithelium/a leg from a still living monster.

Deeply pleasant flashbacks to Ultima 7, although I don't think I've encountered monsters with five legs of meat, yet.

Endless Ocean - Found the humpback whale. Also, and I have no idea if it's a technical issue or a design choice, but compared to videos of Aquanaut's Holiday 3, there are way fewer fish in EO -- but I'm okay with that because AH3 is a goddamn cloud of stingrays and that just LOOKS odd.

DQ6 - I just did the intro stuff and am heading to Somnia castle. This isn't really on my focus list.Crusader Kings 2 - Tried to fight Cumania again, and lost. ALMOST managed to take out their army, which was twice as big as mine, but failed, and Byzantium was taking too long to get any units up there, so.

Currently Byzantium is fighting some Seljuk vassal and I might help them with that because for the time being I /really/ want a strong Byzantine Empire as a neighbor.

Logged

o/` I do not feel joy o/`o/` I do not dream o/`o/` I only stare at the door and smoke o/`

I'm not really fond of FFVI myself. Square was obviously trying to represent every single character archetype and gameplay mechanic they could thing of, but it's like they did it without any regards to whether it made sense or not. So you end up with things like two separate bluemages (neither of whom are that useful), some characters that have useful-but-really-situational skills like Celes, Sabin and Edgar each having one really overpowered god-tech (so you always need them in your party but spamming their thing gets tedious), there's a lot of useless skills/spells beyond that, and then the second half turns into some number-crunching hell where everything is second to how you're using espers to boost characters' stats or something.

Or, you know, you could just play with the characters you like and enjoy the game since it's not exactly difficult enough to demand optimizing...

I did that. My party was mostly Locke, Terra, Edgar, and Sabin, when I could choose them, and it mostly just amounted to attacking, spamming chainsaw, and spamming either... bum rush or whatever Sabin's most powerful thing was. I didn't really think Relm, Strago, or Setzer had much in the way of personality, and Cyan's personal skill was too obnoxious to bother using.

It's a 90s traditional JRPG. I don't really think those are fun unless there's some sort of strategy required, because there's nothing inherently pleasurable about just making menu selections, and the dungeon/area designs were never interesting enough to make exploration fun for me..

Logged

o/` I do not feel joy o/`o/` I do not dream o/`o/` I only stare at the door and smoke o/`